


Temporary Madness

by Nebulad



Series: Cannibal Witch of the Wilds [4]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Hysteria's Not Real Unless It's Convenient, Injury, Kissing, Mild Gore, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23211007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: “How did Tolfdir know that we would be all right going on ahead? I mean, we can take care of ourselves, but he doesn’t know that,” he said. She snorted quietly, and shrugged.“Maybe we impressed him.”“Maybeyouimpressed him, unless he’s particularly dazzled by elves who stand around and do nothing but look like they’d rather be anywhere else.” Draugr tombs were much better when you expected them, although to be fair he didn’t know what hehadbeen expecting when they saidSaarthal, the first Nord settlement that was wiped out by elves.Anywhere there were dead Nords tended to be trouble, much like places where there were alive Nords. “And in that case I bet he can barely keep from drooling at the sight of Ancano.”
Relationships: Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Rumarin, Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Rumarin
Series: Cannibal Witch of the Wilds [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/513346
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	Temporary Madness

Tolfdir had given Rumarin such a  _ look  _ before leaving him and Tsabhira to fend for themselves in Saarthal. “I’m sure you and… I’m sure the both of you can handle yourselves,” he’d said, obviously trying to decide whether or not Rumarin actually belonged there. Tsabhi was bad enough with her hedge witchery, but how could you tell if an elf was a mage without seeing him cast?

Well, easy. You checked to see if he was an Altmer and then pretty well assumed because all Altmers were born mages. You had to be an incredibly stupid, useless sort of person if you were both High Elf and completely unable to cast something as simple as candlelight, which Tsabhi had been doing wordlessly for the lot of them until she realised the tomb was filled with draugr.

Not that Rumarin was bitter or hated mages or wished they’d never gone to the College of Winterhold or wanted to ask why Tsabhi even bothered because even if she didn’t have the experience that Tolfdir had, she was  _ much  _ less insufferable than the rest of the mages. No, he followed her quietly into the draugr crypt, sword at the ready because he’d signed on to help her and literally no other partner had ever stuck with him as long as she had. For that, he’d put up with a few mages looking at him in bewilderment because he wouldn’t cast anything; even suspicion, because an Altmer who didn’t do magic had to be some sort of secret plant. Sure, Ancano already existed, but they  _ knew  _ he was spying.

“How did  _ Tolfdir  _ know that we would be all right going on ahead? I mean, we can take care of ourselves, but  _ he  _ doesn’t know that,” he said. She snorted quietly, and shrugged.

“Maybe we impressed him,” she murmured, stepping carefully around a trap that he likewise dodged. She had an eye for that sort of thing, which seemed to be all tied up in the mysterious childhood that was mostly crime and highly illegal grave robbing.

“Maybe  _ you  _ impressed him, unless he’s particularly dazzled by elves who stand around and do nothing but look like they’d rather be anywhere else.” Draugr tombs were much better when you  _ expected  _ them, although to be fair he didn’t know what he  _ had  _ been expecting when they said  _ Saarthal, the first Nord settlement that was wiped out by elves.  _ Anywhere there were dead Nords tended to be trouble, much like places where there were alive Nords. “And in that case I bet he can barely keep from  _ drooling  _ at the sight of Ancano.”

She tried to smother a laugh and then waved him off as they entered a wide, open room. There was little furniture and even fewer solid walls that hadn’t been reduced to rubble. A set of stairs led to a platform on which there was a tomb, and Rumarin would offer anyone who  _ didn’t  _ think it was going to pop open a lovely property in Winterhold, overlooking the Sea of Ghosts. He gestured up at it and she nodded, wincing as she heard the telltale crack of the stone breaking open.

Battles were fairly routine between the two of them— Tsabhi softened the enemy up with as much fire as she could stand to cast, and once she ran out of magicka Rumarin would finish off whatever it was. It wasn’t always perfect, of course, but the common draugr would fall easily enough to fire and blade. One thing, however, was become increasingly obvious as Tsabhi’s fire flickered out and Rumarin’s sword clanged off of the opposing greatsword.

This was not a common draugr.

“Ideas?” he asked as he ducked by her. She drew Nettlebane, although quite frankly she still wasn’t very gifted in the art of the blade. It beat standing there and getting stabbed, though, so she rushed after him to try and draw the draugr off so he could down a potion. His sword was coming dangerously close to disappearing.

“A wight? Or… or a deathlord or something? I don’t know, it’s all second hand information from Nords,” she said, taking off as the thing targeted her. He made sure to rush the potion a little, because while neither of them were really prepared to take a significant hit, he’d rather it not be the only person who knew healing magic.

“I don’t care what its  _ name  _ is, how do we get  _ rid  _ of it?” He rushed it from behind and got a few good stabs in before it turned its back. The unfortunate part was that as good as the stabs were, they seemed insufficient; the bloody thing wasn’t even flinching, though it was filled with  _ vile  _ slash marks that made its puckered white skin hang open like an old sack.

“Kill it, Rumarin, how else?” She tossed another fireball, which it certainly didn’t like. It whipped its head around to her and it  _ shouted;  _ and not just the angry shouting that rich people did at apprentices, but the  _ dragon  _ shout. Far be it from him to be able to discern what it actually said, but Nettlebane hit the wall with a clang and Tsabhi was sent sprawling backwards.  _ “Fuck,” _ was all she managed as she rolled out of the way of a blow.

Unperturbed by the near miss, the draugr spun on its withered heel towards Rumarin. He wasn’t quite sure that it’d the worth the beast’s effort to shout the conjured sword from his hands because the lot of it would disappear and he could summon a new one, but the thing was more clever than he gave it credit for. It began attacking with a ferocity reserved for actual dragons, beating his stupid conjured sword so hard that Rumarin could feel it wavering.

Tsabhi tossed a few more fireballs, but evidently all the monster’s eggs were in one basket now. Rumarin got in two more good parrys and one very narrow one before the sword shattered into air and the draugr shaved a piece of his arm for him, skin and all. The noise he made wasn’t quite befitting of an adventurer who had any sort of pain tolerance, and his subsequent leap to the side was more a happy coincidence than actual strategy. He heard Tsabhi call for him but busied himself with the potion he had on his belt instead.

. . . . .

There was absolutely nothing about this situation that Tsabhi could use, and as a consequence her mind had long since spiralled into a quiet panic. Rumarin was bloody and just far enough away that she couldn’t hit him with a healing spell; and besides, she didn’t have the magicka and had run out of potions to replenish it. The draugr remembered that she existed as soon as Rumarin ducked behind a fortuitous slab of rubble, so now her battle strategy consisted of running; but not too far away from her companion, and neither too close.

“Ru?” she asked, crawling up on a ledge to stall the approach of the beast. He didn’t answer, but she could see him moving. That meant that he was alive, but it also seemed like she was on her own for the moment. That… usually didn’t work out. It was why she’d hired Rumarin in the first place; he was competent in a melee position and knew how to step out of her sight lines while she tried to fire.

She scrambled up as high as she could, willing her magicka to  _ just come back.  _ If she had a good fireball or two then maybe— well, she didn’t precisely  _ know,  _ did she? Draugr were the realm of Nords and she knew jack shit about any of it, especially how to kill the more powerful ones. Simply crouching down and disappearing into the dark wasn’t an option, because if the monster lost her then it’d go for Rumarin again, so she was stuck just… hoping it died?

She backed herself up against the edge of the platform as the draugr moved closer, feeling the magic briefly return to her fingertips. She  _ could  _ toss a fireball again, but so far all it’d done was piss it off. If it worked, then they’d be fine; if it didn’t, then it was a waste of magicka and extended the time they spent trying to survive.  _ Stabbing  _ hadn’t done much better, but traditionally speaking no creature was entirely immune to getting cut open.

She made the decision, jumping off the platform and rolling her fall, rushing over to Rumarin. He was sweating and shivering, neither of which were good things that she could take a proper look at in the time they had before the shambler took the stairs back down. “Hold still,” she hissed, pressing her hands against his torn, bloody sleeve. He cried out in pain and she ignored him, promising herself quietly to buy him a decent meal once they got out of here— the bleeding stopped on the arm although the shivering got worse from the pain. That… didn’t bode well for the sword she was hoping he’d conjure. “Ru?”

“I can’t,” he hissed, shaking his arm in something akin to fury. “The stupid… spell won’t go. I can’t.”

“Help me find Nettlebane,” she decided abruptly, turning to see the creature finally come to the end of the stairs. They split up, Rumarin still wincing in agony as his arm was forced to support his clumsy scrambling. Tsabhira could claim no more grace than him, although she did have the advantage of no wounding so far; she shot over to the corner where her dagger had been shouted from her hands, cursing the fucking Nords and their disastrous tomb maintenance skills. They were all up in arms about the honoured dead being disturbed, but  _ significantly  _ less upset about the cursed nature of the bloody things  _ or  _ actually  _ keeping  _ the tomb. There was so much rubble to sift through, and it was much harder when the  _ honoured dead  _ was trying to rend her bloody head from her shoulders.

The draugr was still focused on her which was a blessing and a curse. While Rumarin searched the outer area where Nettlebane might’ve been tossed, she posited herself where she’d been standing before and began to look around the immediate area. She could hear the squelching of the body as it approached her, and rolled to escape its reach. The greatsword clanged off the ground where she’d been moments before, and she swore viciously before diving back in. Nettlebane might’ve been stuck anywhere, and it didn’t help that ebony did very little to differentiate itself from stone. It had runes on the blade, but they were most visible in the light— there was very little of that, and no magicka to create any.

She dodged another blow narrowly, feeling the wind of the descent on her fingers as she yanked them back. A puff of dust and dirt flew into the air and she coughed, throwing herself backwards to avoid the rebound blow. Her heart was pounding and her limbs felt weak— she overextended herself with all the evading, but the alternative was to let the sword cleave her in half.

Unfortunately, it was suddenly looking very grim. She noticed too late that she’d tossed herself back into a corner, which the draugr was using to its advantage. It blocked her in and raised its arms to deliver the final blow— there was no right to jump to, and any left action would require her to get past the thing’s legs. As it was her only option, she took a deep breath, and—

Rumarin leapt at the draugr from behind, slashing at it viciously. He focused on the neck and got lucky, hitting some tendon that held the rest of the ropey beast together. It collapsed, the blue light fading out of its eyes— that didn’t stop the elf from stabbing it a few more times, though.  _ “Why— don’t— you— stay— dead?” _ he snapped, kicking the corpse for good measure. With that, the anger seemed to melt out of him and into the floor. He followed the drained emotion, flopping down on his back and taking a deep breath, wiping the blood from his hands to his face (and in reverse). “The Nords should  _ really  _ consider burning their dead,” he groaned.

She felt stiff all over, like the adrenaline in her system had hardened the second the draugr fell. She laughed, quiet at first, then filled herself full to bursting with laughter. She could feel tears in her eyes and she distantly knew she was a little bit hysterical, but couldn’t bring herself to care.

“I found Nettlebane, by the way,” Rumarin said, ignoring her sob-giggles. “It’s in the draugr.”

Without really knowing what she was doing, she unfurled her limbs from their painful paralysis and shuffled over to him. She took her sleeve and tried to wipe the blood from his face, still grinning like a fucking loon. She’d never been so close to death before. Even in Bruma when the Imperials attacked, she couldn’t feel the afterlife against her throat. Even in Helgen, the idea of ceasing to exist had been so far away. “Please don’t lose your mind,” he muttered, trying to sit up and failing on his injured arm. “If you’re going to do it then at least do it somewhere nice. I’m too pretty to have to live in a Nord tomb with you for eternity.”

She kissed his stupid, pretty face for keeping her alive.

Evidently, he hadn’t really expected her to do so; still, he didn’t shove her off so she just… kept going. She couldn’t have said where her head was at, but her hands trembled trying to support her weight and without the usual magicka to make her feel… normal. Once it came back she could maybe refocus, but until then she was just… kissing Rumarin. Distantly, she thought about his hundred septim fee and had to force a laugh back into her ribs, still partially… spacey. Loopy. Not thinking straight.

Magicka felt blue and so she felt blue-ish as her arms strengthened with magic again. She pulled back, blinking stupidly because it suddenly occurred to her that she’d been half hysterical and  _ weird  _ about it. More than weird. Definitely weird and sort of invasive and he’d been kissing her too but sometimes Rumarin just sort of did as she said and she hadn’t really  _ said  _ anything but— 

She rolled back on her back, watching the ceiling. “I’m going to  _ kill  _ Tolfdir,” she hissed. The hysteria wasn’t  _ her  _ fault so much as it was the fault of the stupid  _ master wizard  _ who’d left an apprentice and her companion to the dangers of a Nord ruin  _ by themselves,  _ so he could study  _ tombs  _ of all things; as if there wasn’t a fucking tomb every three steps in this  _ hell province.  _ Sure, Saarthal had a lot of them, but what had Tolfdir  _ expected? _

“There she is,” Rumarin muttered, sitting up properly. He gasped, once again putting weight on his injury, and she sat up to take his arm much less urgently than she had before. Healing was easier when she could focus, and focusing let her avoid thinking. Rumarin wasn’t a bad kisser, which was precisely what she was avoiding thinking about because the whole thing had been ill-advised and the product of… so,  _ so  _ much relief. So much not being dead. So much uncertainty, because she’d never travelled with anyone for this long who wasn’t family, so how was she supposed to know how to behave herself? “So, what’s next?” he asked, and she jolted maybe a little more violently than what was completely normal.

“Sit still and let me take care of your arm,” she said shortly, feeling her stupid face heating up.

“I meant after that; trust me, I’m happy to sit here quietly until my arm stops feeling like thinly sliced horker meat.” He was being so casual. She thought he’d at least have a quip about the kiss or the hysteria, but it seemed his mouth was only contextually clever. She’d almost think she’d imagined it, a brief foray into the Shivering Isles while she waited for sense to return, but she could see where she’d wiped the blood off his mouth.

She looked up at the platform, frowning thoughtfully. “Forward I guess. If we run into any more of… whatever the hell that was, we’re leaving and Tolfdir can fuck right off.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shit's bananas, huh. Thought it might be a good time to paw around in my drafts folder. So here's a plug for some free games I make, one a [mystery escape romance,](https://heartforge.itch.io/manor-hill) one an [urban fantasy romance,](https://dashingdon.com/play/heartforge/bad-ritual/mygame/) and one [environmentalist revolution romance](https://heartforge.itch.io/hybrid). Surely you can sense a theme, but regardless there's some more genre fiction to be consumed.
> 
> And here's Rumarin and Tsabhi doing something akin to real romance. Surely in the future, scientists will look at this record and say 'huh, that's kind of like a relationship'. Tsabhi like hm I'm an alteration mage I think I can gaslight this memory right out of existence, while Rumarin has thought nothing but static for three days afterwards.
> 
> A cuter first kiss fic exists between these two but it needs a deeper ending than what it has. So does this one, but there's some semblance of a conclusion here eh.


End file.
